Sally shook her head. “No sign of her anywhere.”
“Just like Rory,” Gigi whispered.
“How have we never heard about this?” Florence asked, her voice stunned. “A case like this would’ve been national news!”
“At the time, it certainly was. But you were no more than a little one yourself when this happened. You wouldn’t remember.” Sally took a long breath. “And, of course, the story died down when she came home.”
The air, already tense, turned even tenser.
“She came home?” Georgia asked, and there was a thread of something in her voice that broke my heart clean in half.
Hope.
“She did,” Agatha confirmed. “Wandered out of the woods nearly a week after she’d first disappeared. A passing car spotted her on the side of the road. Not a scratch on her.”
“She was dirty, of course. A few scrapes and scratches from being outdoors… A bit of sunburn. Slightly dehydrated. But physically, she was completely unharmed.” Sally hesitated. “Except, of course…”
We waited.
Sally and Agatha traded another glance — one that made all the hair on the back of my neck lift straight up. Whatever they were going to say next…
It wasn’t good.
“Just tell us,” Gigi pleaded softly. “Tell us the end.”
“She never spoke another word,” Agatha said, a fissure of sorrow in her voice. “Not the day she returned, not in the weeks or months that followed. Not ever. Whatever she saw in those woods, whatever she experienced in her time out there… It rendered her totally mute.”
“Horrible,” Sally said. “Just horrible. We were all shocked. I can’t imagine how her parents felt, getting her back only to…” She trailed off at Georgia’s sharp intake of breath. “I’m sorry, dear. I told you this story wasn’t one you’d want to hear.”
“I’m fine,” Gigi lied. “I want to know. Tell us the rest.”
Florence hugged her tighter. I shifted my stool closer so I could press my thigh against hers beneath the counter.
Agatha cleared her throat. “The Thurman family was wealthy. The father was a doctor, the mother a lawyer. They paid for the best medical experts in the state. ENTs. Surgeons. Specialists. Speech pathologists. All of them said the same thing. Her vocal cords were fine. It was selective mutism. Psychologists figured she must’ve had some kind of trauma while she was missing. But they never learned what. Never found a suspect in her disappearance, either.”
“How can that be?” Gwen shook her head. “A child was gone for a week, and the police had no suspect?”
“Technically, they had no evidence of a crime being committed. By all accounts, she might’ve just wandered off. There was no way to confirm she’d been taken by someone. She wasn’t abused, wasn’t injured.”
“She never spoke another word!” Flo exclaimed. “I’d say that’s evidence enough that something happened out there in the woods!”
“Even so, there was no proof. No explanation. And no answers,” Sally murmured. “Generally, a situation like that makes people uncomfortable. They need someone to blame, some answer as to why a thing like that happened.”
“Which brings us back to the legend,” Agatha said. “The Witch of Salem Wood.”
“They created a villain because there wasn’t one.” My mind was racing nearly as fast as my pulse. “And the legend was born.”
Gwen nodded slowly. “The witch who steals your voice. Makes sense.”
We all fell silent. It was a lot to process. I wanted to ask what had happened to the Thurman girl after her diagnosis, but I was highly conscious of Georgia sitting beside me, barely holding it together. I’d have to ask Sally or Agatha another time.
“Desmond is going to flip over this story,” Florence said finally, shattering the heavy silence. “The birth of a local legend… that’s like crack cocaine to the man. Ohgod, I bet he’ll want to do a deep dive. Do you know what that means? I’ll tell you what it means! Another academic journal submission. Another paper it’ll take eons for him to write, locked away in his study. Another peer review process.” She said the wordspeer reviewlike they tasted foul. “I might as well prepare for six months of playing second fiddle to this fictitious witch. She’s about to be the main lady in his life.”
Gwen stifled a laugh. “At least he’s no longer in his Sleepy Hollow phase. Remember when he started insisting thatIchabodis a solid name if you ever have kids?”
“Don’t remind me,” Florence grumbled. “There’s a reason the jury’s still out on whether or not I’ll reproduce.”
“Can we get back to my cheesecake, now?” Sally interjected, sounding impatient. “I’d like to get the batter into the springform before I expire.”